They want to know how to get their business to grow, but have seen so many things fail, that they’ve lost hope.

Think about this for a moment. We’re all facing this challenge at some level right now. We want a bigger, more successful business, yet so much of what we try seems to fall flat instead of producing results.

If you are experiencing this in your business, I promise you, you’re not alone.

OK, so that does pretty much nothing to help you. Just knowing you’re in good company with most every business going through the same things can be settling, but not really helpful.

What can help you is to understand one key word: momentum.

This one little word has been responsible business turn-arounds, even with clients who were just about to give up!

If you want to be one of those businesses, you’ve got to embrace the idea that success does not happen in a flash, it does not come to those who are nice, and it does not come by accident.

Success in your business, comes from building momentum, and then doing everything in your power to keep that momentum rolling in your favor.

Failing to build, and then maintain your momentum will almost guarantee that your business will always be floundering instead of thriving. I’ve been on both sides of this and I will tell you, having momentum makes all the difference in the world!

No, I’m not talking about you and me, I promise! We’re good, really good!

I’m talking about 2013, the year that was by far the most challenging year I’ve ever experienced yet. And it wasn’t just my business, it was a rough year for every business owner I know, without exception.

It felt as if the earth beneath our feet was constantly shifting and it was hard to get a solid foothold to be able to push forward.

That’s the bad news. While I’m not a big fan of harping on the bad, it’s a great place to start, but not to hang onto.

Tomorrow, we begin a fresh new year. Now just changing the date on a calendar doesn’t wipe out everything, but I know that what doesn’t kill us makes us stronger.

After this past year, I feel stronger than ever. I feel more confident in my work because of the storms of the past year.

In some respects, I’ve become a master at “desperate marketing” where the odds are stacked against you, the budget is gone, and there are only a few days left to make sales.

This is trial-by-fire, and it’s an experience I would not have traded for anything.

I suspect that in 2014, there will still be bumps, things will continue to be rough, but you and I are now experienced in dealing with the rough stuff, and so I firmly believe that we’re going to see things improve on a personal level.

Forget about the economy, and focus instead on your own financial health.

Forget about health care laws and the disaster that our health care system and do things to take care of yourself because it’s abundantly clear that a government run health care system will fail us all and can’t be relied upon.

Forget about the businesses that have failed around you. Realize that when a business fails, there are more customers for those that are still open for business.

Forget that people are short on cash and have slowed their buying to a snail’s pace and instead focus on the few that are still buying, who have money, and who are moving forward despite what may be happening around them.

Learn to become selfish (not mean). In other words, be sure to take care of you before trying to take care of anybody else. After all, you may think you can help others when you’re in trouble, but you can’t. You must become strong, then you will have the power and resources to help others.

This past weekend, I had a chance to chat with a family member who runs a computer repair business. What was interesting is that his primary marketing model was that he charges less for what he does than the competition.

This is a very common practice in that a business owner will “think” that by charging less than the competition, they are “marketing.”

We know, after decades of research on the topic, that people don’t buy on price alone and in fact, price figures into their buying decision less than 5% of the time!

So if dropping your prices is your only marketing strategy, you’re missing the point of marketing.

Here are a few suggestions that you might want to consider instead of simply putting things on sale:

1) Add Value: Rather than lower your price, add items to your offer that boost its VALUE. You could add some digital content (e-books, reports, audio, and/or video) to your offering. If you’re a service business, you could add some additional time onto your service, or offer to do something more than you usually do. Think of the hair stylist who also gives you a little head massage before getting into your hair!

2) Show Them What Else it Can Do: In other words, you may want to paint an even bigger/brighter picture of what owning what you’re selling will do for your customer.

Think of the infomercials that sell steak knives and they show you what other things you can do with their steak knives. Maybe you can cut watermelon, tomatoes, bread, etc. You get the idea.

3) Take Them Farther Down the Path: Instead of just being focused on what your customer will gain in the immediate term, let them know what buying your product or service will give them in the weeks, months, and even years ahead.

For instance, if I were to sell you a marketing training program, I would mention that once you learn what I have to share with you, you’ll have those skills to use as much as you’d like for the rest of your career. Then I might ask, what is that worth to you?

4) Make the Price Disappear: Yup, you MUST make the price disappear in the minds of your customers. If cannot become the reason why they choose not to buy from you.

In the case of my family member who fixes computers, I asked him what it was worth to a company that had valuable data locked up in a failed computer if he were able to recover that data for them?

His answer told a very different story about what he could be charging his clients because lost data can represent tens of thousands of dollars in lost productivity for a company. In that light whatever his price was would be seen as a bargain by a company with that issue.

Here is my advice for you.

Only lower your prices if everything you’ve tried has failed to work for you. In other words, dropping your price is a last ditch effort and should only be used to avoid closing the doors of your business, and should never be used as standard practice in your marketing.

Looking around, I think it would not be that much of a stretch to say that 2012 was a bumpy year for most of us. The real question is what will you do to make things better in the months ahead?

Most people I meet tend to be affected by the national news, which is never good news. Seriously, if you want to feel really bad, turn on the TV and watch the national news for an hour. Trust me, there is nothing inspirational or motivational in anything these organizations broadcast.

But how much of it really affects you directly? If you’re honest about it, very little of what you hear on the news has a direct or immediate impact on you and your career.

The strategy you should work to adopt is one of curiosity about the national news instead of taking what you see as truth.

Put your energy on who you are and what you are working to accomplish in your life, and stop worrying about what the rest of the world is up to.

I get asked all the time what it takes to become a successful person and my answer, at the core, always revolves around being responsible for your own destiny. In other words, put your attention on you and what you’re doing instead of being focused on what other people are doing around you.

Another way to look at this is to become more selfish. Take back your attention and put it where it can make a real difference. Since you can’t change the national news or even the person closest to you, stop trying!

Change you instead. Put your attention on you, what you’re doing, what you want, and what you need to do to get it.

Now this does not mean you ignore your loved ones, it just means that you make you the primary focus of your life.

When you do this a few things happen. First, you become more successful in your business and in your career. Second, you end up being better able to support those you care about most in more ways than you may have ever imagined possible.

Success does one other thing for you too. It makes you stronger not just financially, but as a person. It builds confidence and it even improves your health and well-being!

Did you know that it’s simply not possible to build your business on your own?

Did you know that every business that becomes something of a success got that way, not because of one person doing it all, but because one person inspired a team and together they created a successful business.

The question for most of us in business, is just how do you go about building your team?

How do you get people to help you build your business?

Why would somebody want to help you?

And how do you incentives them to step up to the plate and put some real effort into helping to build your business?

There are a few stages of business growth and at each stage, the formula for attracting the help you need is going to be different.

In the mid 1990’s when a little start up with an odd name called Amazon.com got underway, they knew they needed to reach out to a lot of people, but that they didn’t have the resources to do much about it.

Never to be deterred, the founder, Jeff Bezos, literally invented the affiliate program. By incentivizing their customers to refer others to their web site, they created what would become an industry leading company in just a few short years.

In the earliest phases of your business, you can and should borrow this model and find as many ways as possible to offer incentives to people, businesses, and list owners that are different from the everyday.

For instance, most people who write to me make essentially the same offer. They say in effect, “promote my widget to your list and I’ll share a small percentage of the sales you generate with you.”

Can you see why I’m simply not excited by this kind of offer? Not only are they common, they completely fail to take into account the fact that there is real work and real risk involved in sending anything to a list I’ve worked really hard to build.

If you were to think outside of the box, you might make a better offer and get much better results too. What if you could offer a list owner a full 100% of the sales they generate for you on a front-end offer, and then you could keep 100% of any and all back-end offers and upsells?

I would respond to that kind of offer and so would many other list owners too.

What if you made that offer to past customers of yours? I’ll bet many of them would jump at the chance to tell their friends, especially if they have had a great experience with your company.

The idea that I want you to take away from this is simply that if you want bigger success, you’ve got to do things that other people are either unwilling or unable to do.

Thinking up new an innovative ways to interest people in promoting your web site, your offers, your products is what separates those that struggle from those that get to live the good life.

A great question to start asking right now is, “What would it take in order for you, Mr. Listowner, to jump at the chance to tell your list about my products?”

If you don’t know the answer, start asking some list owners, business owners, friends, and business associates for some ideas. And always, always, always be on the lookout for offers that catch your attention so that you can borrow those ideas to use in your own business too.

Personally, I watch companies like Amazon.com because they always seem to be coming up with many new an innovative ways to get more people to their web site.

And, I have borrowed many of their ideas and used them with my own business and those of many of my clients as well.

Now, go ahead and come up with something that you feel confident you can do to build your business and feel free to share it with me, if you want some honest feedback.

In my last message to you, I mentioned that things have changed, but I did not go into much detail on how they have changed.

One reader, Patrick O., pointed this out and asked if I might share my thoughts on how things are different now.

Knowing how things have shifted and changed is an important tool in trying to figure out what’s coming next, so let’s get into this by looking back just a few short years ago, say just before Obama became President.

Was the economy roaring? No, in fact it had already begun its decline. Around that time, companies began to lay off workers. The numbers were not surprising, at least at this time.

For small business owners, things were starting to slow down, people were being a little more cautious about how they were spending their money, and hiring was sluggish at best.

From 2008 to the present day, things have gotten much, much worse. I have a bird’s eye view of small business since working with small business owners is my primary role in life and can tell you that not one, in any industry, has managed to escape the challenges of this dismal economy.

As with all things, there is a silver lining to all the bad news out there. With hardly any new jobs being created over the past couple of years, and more people being cast aside, what you want to pay attention to is what these people are doing once their unemployment checks stop coming.

From what I see now, there is a HUGE part of our population, I would guess it numbers well over 20% now, of people who have been unemployed and have been unsuccessful at finding another job.

No, I don’t at all believe the “official” unemployment numbers as they have clearly been “fixed” to make it look as though things are not as bad as they are. A simple look around all all the people you know will give you a much better idea of just how bad the situation is.

You have to ask, “what will happen with all these people?” When the government checks stop coming, they have a few options. First, they can claim disability. If you’ve paid attention to the numbers, you’ll note that this is popular route for many who have burned through an astounding 99 weeks of unemployment checks.

The second option, and one you’re seeing more and more people choose, is to start their own business. It’s this segment of the population that you want to pay attention to.

These are the people who will help guide us out of this economic mess and who will create the next generation of Apple, Microsoft, and HP.

Each one of these now major companies started during the worst of times in the 1970’s. Today, they are the cornerstones of our economy.

I am looking for these people, I’m looking to help them, to support them, to train them, and to help get them up and running because they are the ones that will make the biggest difference in our world.

Change comes, not from government, but from individuals with a dream. People who dare to follow their passions and who lead others by setting the example of what’s possible.

Government, by contrast, is reactive in nature, uninformed, inefficient, and absolutely not creative in any manner. So they have zero ability to affect positive change in our world and in fact, tend most often to deter and interrupt success.

You, as an individual can be creative, you can follow your passions and make your dreams a reality. You can create a business that will support you and your family for decades to come.

This is where the energy, the creativity, the joy, or what I like to call the life force really is.

Put your attention on those things that mean something. Look for people who dare step up and who are ready to take charge of their own lives and create a future they can be proud of.

These people will be your customers. They will be the ones that will create jobs, who will stimulate the economy, and who may in fact, change the world.

Today, you might think about companies like Facebook, or Instagram. You can literally sit at home, write an “app” and walk off with a billion dollar buyout a year or two later.

Things have indeed changed, and not all of it is for the worst. Information is the new “hot product” and that includes all the tools needed to both search and store it so that it’s there when you need it.

Think about the Kindle, the iPad, the Nook, and all the other tools being sold at a breakneck pace, all designed to help you consume more information.

You have some choices to make for yourself. You can decide to “stick it out” and “see what happens” or you can step up to the plate and make a play that could very define not only the rest of your life, but of many others whose lives you will touch along the way.

There is much to do, much to be gained, and now is the best time to get out there and get to work!

It’s not uncommon for me to be asked about what makes the most money in a business. I love this question because I always have a great answer at the ready.

The best part is that this something that I advise every one of my clients to create, regardless of what their core business is.

You may laugh, but I’ve successfully advised doctors, dentists, chiropractors, a ski enthusiast, golfer, and even a FARMER to add this to their product mix with incredible results in every case!

With profit margins that are typically measured it hundreds of percentage points, ease of duplication, speed of creation, and many marketing channels available to you, it would be a massive mistake for you and your business.

But the one thing that really gets me excited is that I have yet meet a single person who can create these kinds of products!

I’ve even gotten my younger brother involved in creating these products and he’s now begun reaping the rewards of his efforts. By the way, he only puts in a very part-time effort on creating his products.

I would HIGHLY encourage you to have a look at this because it could be your ticket to thriving in the years ahead.

As a business owner, you know that there are all kinds of challenges that you must face on a daily basis. Most of them are challenges that you can see, feel, and even hear but there is one that’s literally a “silent killer” that most every entrepreneur falls victim to at one time or another.

This silent killer has been responsible for the death of more businesses and business ideas than every other business challenge combined!

Personally, I’ve suffered from this disease for many years while I sat back and hoped and hoped that things would soon change. Things only got worse.

I didn’t recognize the symptoms, nor had I been informed to look out for this silent killer in my business, so I suffered for years under the effects of this disease before I finally started to unearth some real solutions.

Some years back, when I was completely broke, I was searching for ways to bring in some c-a-s-h to refill my empty bank account.

At the time, I had a single product, which I sold for $147. I reasoned that if I could just sell 10 of these per month, I’d be alright for a while.

The problem was that I didn’t have the dollars to buy any advertising. I couldn’t even place a classified ad at that point in time, but I knew that I had a great product and if I could let enough people know about it, all would be fine again.

This situation set me on a path to figure out just how you can market and promote when you just can’t afford to pay for anything (at time, this included food for me!).

What I discovered literally changed my view of marketing over-night.

There was not just one, but dozens and dozens of way to market, to promote, and even to advertise that did NOT require any of my own money, and that could indeed produce the 10 or more sales I wanted each month.

Well, I set out on a journey to implement as many of these strategies as I could, as fast as I could.

One evening, while I was in my tiny 1-bedroom apartment, I sat in front of my computer and watched as the orders came in for my product. For a while, every time I hit the “send/receive” button on my e-mail, there was a new order!

This kept up for several hours that night, and continued at a slower pace for 3 or 4 days. I had not only hit the 10 sales I was looking for, but literally had closer to 100 sales, which was ten times what I had set my goal to be.

As you could imagine, after that experience, I was hooked! So hooked in fact, that to this day, this is the PRIMARY form of marketing I use to build my business and it’s what I advise my high-dollar consulting clients to do as well.

I can and will show you what I do, how I do it, and how you can use these same strategies in your own business if you’ll go have a look at this web page now: http://uwitv.com/77